“Next year, we will be a little taller.”
Towards the end of his memoir, Shoe Dog, Nike founder Phil Knight tells of a conversation with the CEO of Nissho, Masuro Hayami. He describes him as “Perhaps the wisest man I ever knew”.
“Knight complained about the challenges he faced at Nike even after taking the company public as they sat in a hot tub after a barbecue in the backyard of Hayami’s beach house near Atami, Japan.”
“We have so much opportunity,” he told Hayami. “But we’re having a terrible time getting managers who can seize those opportunities. We try people from the outside, but they fail because our culture is so different.”
He complained and felt frustrated, which I’m guilty of many times. As soon as I hit a business milestone, I’m already focused on the next milestone.
Here is Mr. Hayami’s answer:
“Mr. Hayami nodded. ‘See those bamboo trees up there?’ he asked. ‘Yes.’ ‘Next year, when you come, they will be one foot higher.’
A Seaside Prayer
It was 2020—the COVID year. We had massively strict lockdowns in South Africa. I hated it. I don’t handle control very well. As a fellow Scotsman (okay, my great grandfather was a Scot) named William Wallace once said, “FREEDOM!”. I love freedom. I need my space, bru. ⚔️
Luckily, I lived in a town very far from the cities of South Africa. I called it our own little Texas. Here, everything goes. There is not a lot of law enforcement in these parts.
Staying in one place did get a bit too much for us as a family, as we love adventure. So, in September 2020, we went to see the flower fields of Nieuwoudtville and stayed two nights in a Seaside town called Paternoster.
Pencil Bible was still called “The Bible For Creatives” back then and was just an idea on IndieGoGo waiting for $8000 in funding.
The campaign wasn’t going well. At that point, it hadn't even passed $1000.
The weather in Paternoster was crap (cold, rainy and windy), but I decided to escape our one-room guesthouse and leave the three little one’s with my wife for a quick run on the seaside. About 1 km down the beach, I sat on a dune and earnestly prayed to God. I can’t remember what I said, but I believe it was something like “Please, Lord, give me this”.
A week or so later, someone (thanks, Christie) donated $5500 to the campaign; the rest is history. It’s great when someone you haven’t met in person believes in you and an idea.
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It is now almost exactly four years later, and my family and I made the same trip. This time, though, we got a whole house to ourselves. #space
This was, in a way (for me at least), a sort of way to pay homage (honour) to the last four years of my life, especially with regard to Pencil Bible. I’m not a nostalgic person, but I felt very nostalgic planning this trip.
Pencil Bible has been a journey of endless grace, favour, and patience for the product to get to this point where it is self-sustaining and growing 5% more or less every month.
To put things into perspective. Total costs amounted to about $12,000 to make the first version launched on the App Store in March 2022, a year and a half after that prayer.
To date (2.5 years after launch), we have spent over $223,000! When I saw that amount, I was surprised to see how much it takes to manage an app like Pencil Bible. Apps aren't cheap.
In March 2022, we had 400 downloads. Now, we have 14000 a month (although few stay on to actually use PB)! Magic.
In the mud
Still, I feel unsatisfied. Version 3.0 has taken some hits in the last two weeks, and I almost felt sorry for myself. I wanted to launch at the end of September. Nope.
Our current dev, Matt, is struggling with Chisritan’s code in so many ways that he can’t implement it. He has been digging into the code for months but can’t do anything with it.
Christian (from Margelo) is knee-deep in a new project, so he doesn’t really have time for Pencil Bible at the moment. Even if he did, our budget is a little tight. Then, I started to stress about users' notes. We got a few support emails about users' notes getting lost. We already can’t seem to finish V3! Now, I must divert Matt’s attention to fix those user cases. Luckily, the issues were unique in a way and were fixable. But I started to stress even more about all our users. What if everyone’s notes get lost, and we can’t recover them? I overreacted and began to worry about everything (I think it was burnout).
That’s why this little holiday is so memorable.
After a very hectic few months of work and family life, I finally found some rest. I was so inspired that I wrote this whole blog post in an hour with the noise of the sea’s waves cuddling my ears. To put things into perspective, during the semester at home, I take two weeks to write a post as I’m pressed for time and drained of any inspiration (work, family and burnout compounding into an empty bucket).
So what now?
I wrote a long PM to Christian on Thursday, to which he responded after a few days. He is extremely busy but can commit to a few hours a week as he finds time. So, V3 will take time, unfortunately.
Something I have wanted to do for a while, but I’m finally pulling the trigger, is to appoint a full-time RN Developer. I have a meeting with a recruiter in the USA (Somewhere.com) next Thursday right after putting the kids to bed. I’m again going all in, and hopefully, very soon, we can find ourselves a 10X rockstar engineer who can work full-time on Pencil Bible. We can afford this as the company recruits from the Philippines. I have a feeling that once that is in place, things will go a lot smoother. I’m already considering appointing a second full-time engineer (that’s just how far my brain is going with this) for Android.
Pencil Bible is so unfinished. We have hundreds of features, tweaks, and things to add. It’s overwhelming if you dig into it.
Lucky for us, we still grow every month, and the feedback from users is mostly very positive, besides the odd troll here and there.
Here are some funny reviews to let you know what I have to deal with:😂
So, to summarise this long and winy update (we are not the size of Nike, but the quote is relevant to all parts of life):
‘Next year, we will be a little taller, bigger, better, faster and prettier.’
Want to help?
We would love your help. 💗
- You can support Pencil Bible by sharing with your friends or subscribing.
- Share this new video post by Craig on your social media to help advertise PB: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C__E4pst347/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
- Buy some of our Pencil Bible Merch here: https://cottonbureau.com/people/erin-walker
- Pray we find a great 10X engineer to work full-time on Pencil Bible, also for protection + favour, great, practical and straightforward code solutions and for our developers Matt and Christian for clear minds, health and prosperity.
Warm regards
Erin Walker
P.S. Thanks for reading.
